The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Slave Boy, sentence 95
It was but half a knife, the edge nicked deeply, the point broken off.
Who acts: knife · What happens: be, nick, break off · To what, where: knife, edge, point
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Slave Boy. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (knife), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Mova's own parse. This tree may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | It | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 knife | nsubj |
| 2 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 knife | cop |
| 3 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 6 knife | cc |
| 4 | half | half | DET | NumForm=Word NumType=Frac PronType=Ind | 6 knife | det:predet |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 knife | det |
| 6 | knife | knife | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 9 edge | punct |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 9 edge | det |
| 9 | edge | edge | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 knife | appos |
| 10 | nicked | nick | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 9 edge | acl |
| 11 | deeply | deeply | ADV | _ | 10 nicked | advmod |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 point | punct |
| 13 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 14 point | det |
| 14 | point | point | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 knife | appos |
| 15 | broken | break | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 14 point | acl |
| 16 | off | off | ADP | _ | 15 broken | compound:prt |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 knife | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | knife | half knife | the edge appos; the point appos | tree rules | |||
| 2 | nick | participle | the edge not said here | deeply property | vn carve-21.2-1 «NP V ADVP-Middle»: agent=Patient | ||||
| 3 | break off | participle | the point not said here | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.
Text: «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 66819 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66819/29/95/